Jipange Project

Afya Plus has received a one-year (2022/2023) grant from President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) through the Ambassador’s Fund for HIV/AIDS Relief (AFHR), to implement economic empowerment for People Living with HIV project in Bukombe district of Geita region. The “JIPANGE” project primarily focus on tap in locally available economic potentials to: –

• Develop capacity of PLHIV groups on attaining entrepreneurship and financial literacy skills and enable them to use available resources for income generating and access financial services.
• Mobilize PLHIV groups for sustainable health service financing through enrolment into health insurance scheme to avoid catastrophic health expenditure due to out-of-pocket health care expenses.
• Improve capacity of PLHIV to overcome and cope with psychosocial problems.

The “JIPANGE” project is intended to improve PLHIV’s economic status and ultimately enhance ART treatment outcomes. The project is supporting holistic approach of responding to HIV epidemic control by synergizing/complementing the Government of Tanzania (GoT) efforts of providing quality HIV/AIDS services with Community-Based HIV Response (CBHR) through creating PLHIV groups that provide avenue for PLHIV to support each other on addressing issues related to food security, financial constraints including catering for catastrophic health expenditure due to out-of-pocket medical costs, stigma and discrimination and mental health that potentially  increase chances of poor treatment outcomes as well as malnutrition, gender-based-violence (GBV) and transactional sex that escalating further HIV transmission. The “JIPANGE” project is focusing on providing a comprehensive package of basic entrepreneurship and financial literacy skills to PLHIV groups and facilitate linkage to available local resources for income-generating-activities. Additionally, the project is providing nutrition and dietary counselling, GBV prevention education, psychosocial support, ARV treatment literacy, FP, promote PrEP, importance of COVID-19 vaccination, mental health, and health insurance literacy to address challenges affecting access to and utilization of ART services.